First day of school?

Ok, school started over a month ago, even you super late starting people on both coasts are back in session. So once again I am way behind on updates here. And it turns out I didn't get very good first day of school pics this year. Here are a bunch of others too.

1st day of 1st grade! Standing on the map of the US where his class lines up before school.

Inside his classroom settling on the carpet for the morning introductions, etc.

1st day of a new preschool year for Zane. He's riding the highly coveted John Deere tractor.  Luckily I've been told that he does share it well. This is the same one Terran rode around in his last year of preschool here. They got it sometime during the year and Terran was very excited about the new John Deere.

more John Deere riding

We went "backpacking" with Karen, Gordon, Toby and Matteus. It was in an area with some beetle kill but there were still a good number of live trees. The boys had a great time collected the wood to sell at their store (the log structure to the left here that someone before us built). This backpacking trip consists of a 1 mile hike - very nice for the boys to do. We did the same trip 2 times this summer. Jessie did it with us the 2nd time and she did great - no car sickness and she had a great time. Did throw up some grass in the middle of the night in the tent though and proceeded to sit there whining and acting freaked out for a while though. She's not used to sleeping outside!

dirty dog had fun rolling in the dry dirt

The kitchen area

Terran and Toby are breaking up dead wood to "sell"

Zane is being a decomposer, with J's assistance

Knocking down a dead tree. They were very busy with this project the whole time we were at our campsite and Terran wrote a story about it at school.

We drove over trail ridge road through Rocky Mt. Natl Park on Labor Day weekend  - here is a mommy moose we saw. More pictures to come of her and baby.

Our jungle. We weren't expecting the plants to take off so much. The tomatoes broke down the twine I put around them. Now we can't tell which plant is where. We're adding more garden boxes for next year so things won't be as crowded.

A funny sugar baby watermelon from our garden

The funny watermelon cut open

The casualty from our remodeling project. Our poor little spruce did not survive (probably because the landscapers barely dug up any of its roots when it was temporarily transplanted). We got a new tree to replace it.

Some of our very own tomatoes